Tag Archives: New York

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The engineers in two New York City area commuter train crashes suffered from undiagnosed sleep disorders, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said on Thursday.

The board plans to hold a Feb. 6 meeting on the September 2016 crash in Hoboken, New Jersey, that killed one person and injured more than 100 others, and the January accident in Brooklyn that left more than 100 people with non-life-threatening injuries.

Both engineers had no memory of the crashes and were severely overweight. The Centers for Disease Control says being overweight puts individuals at a higher risk of sleep apnea.

The disorder, characterized by shallow or interrupted breathing during sleep, often goes undiagnosed and can leave sufferers fatigued during the day, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

The safety board said the brakes were working on the New Jersey Transit train traveling at 8 miles (13 km) per hour 38 seconds before the crash. The train then accelerated to 21 mph at impact, twice the speed limit, and emergency brakes were applied one second before the crash.

The 48-year-old engineer underwent a home sleep study in October that concluded “he had severe sleep apnea.” A separate report found he was obese and had gained more than 90 pounds in the previous five years.

In January, the safety board said the Long Island Rail Road train that crashed into a bumper at the busy Atlantic Terminal in New York’s Brooklyn borough appeared to be traveling at more than twice the speed limit of 5 mph.

The engineer was diagnosed with severe obstructive sleep apnea after the crash, the board said on Thursday.

The LIRR began testing all of its 432 engineers for sleep apnea after the accident and told the board that 34 had been screened through May.

Eight of the 34 had screened positive and had been referred for more testing. One other engineer told the LIRR he had been diagnosed and was being treated for sleep apnea.

The safety board has raised the issue before. In 2014, it said the driver of a train that derailed in New York City, killing four passengers, had an undiagnosed sleep disorder at the time of the 2013 accident.

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) – New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Monday that he wants credit-reporting firms to comply with the state’s cyber-security regulations, the latest government official to crack down on the industry in the wake of the massive Equifax hack.

Also on Monday, Bloomberg News reported that federal authorities have opened a criminal probe into stock sales by three Equifax Inc <EFX.N> executives before the company disclosed the massive data breach, news that has weighed heavily on the stock price.

The company has said the executives were unaware of the hack when they sold the stock for $1.8 million.

Equifax’s legal woes worsened as the U.S Attorney’s office in Atlanta issued a statement saying it was working with the FBI on a criminal investigation into the breach and theft of personal information.

Equifax shares rose 1.5 percent on Monday after losing about a third of their value since the hack was announced. The Equifax breach discovered on July 29 exposed sensitive data like Social Security numbers of up to 143 million people.

Cuomo said he planned to require all credit-reporting agencies to register with the state and comply with its cyber-security rules.

The proposed regulation would take effect in February, Cuomo said in a statement. If the companies do not register, they risk being barred from doing business with financial companies regulated by New York state.

The state would be able to bar credit-reporting agencies, including TransUnion <TRU.N> and Experian Plc <EXPN.L>, as well as Equifax, from doing business in New York if the state found they engaged in “unfair, deceptive or predatory practices,” Cuomo said.

“The Equifax breach was a wake-up call,” Cuomo said. “And with this action, New York is raising the bar for consumer protections that we hope will be replicated across the nation.”

Proposed regulations are typically subject to a period for public comment before they become final.

A New York state cyber-security regulation, the first of its kind in the United States, took effect on March 1. It requires financial firms to take measures to protect networks and customer data from hackers and disclose cyber events to regulators.

Maine is the only U.S. state that requires credit agencies to register, said William Lund, superintendent of the Maine Bureau of Consumer Credit Protection. But its law does not cover cyber security, an issue the bureau will have to consider, Lund said.

Maine, which has been registering credit-reporting agencies since the 1990s, has 30 such agencies on its roster, ranging from the largest to those dealing with everything from check approval to tenants’ rental histories, he added.

The three credit-reporting agencies did not respond to requests for comment on Cuomo’s plan.

Bloomberg reported on Monday that the U.S. Justice Department is investigating whether Equifax’s chief financial officer, John Gamble, and two other executives broke insider-trading rules by selling stock after the breach was discovered in July and weeks before it was disclosed this month.

Reuters was not able to confirm the Bloomberg report.

Separately, the company issued a statement saying a second Bloomberg report late on Monday about a second cyber attack in March referred to a breach at Equifax payroll unit that was previously reported to regulators, customers and consumers and also been covered by the press.

“Equifax complied fully with all consumer notification requirements related to the March incident. The two events are not related,” the statement said.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The bombing of a packed London commuter train on Friday prompted officials to beef up security on New York City’s subway system, major commuter rail networks, at airports and other locations.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which operates mass-transit lines in New York City and the Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North commuter lines, said it was closely monitoring the investigation of the fiery blast that injured 29 people in a West London underground station.

The MTA will expand bag screening and deploy extra police patrols on the LIRR and Metro-North, as well as in midtown Manhattan’s Grand Central Terminal and Pennsylvania Station, “out of an abundance of caution,” spokesman Kevin Ortiz said.

MTA officials were also consulting with New York City police about bolstering security in the subway system, he said.

New York state Governor Andrew Cuomo said in a statement he had also directed authorities to increase security at airports, bridges, tunnels and other sensitive locations across the state.

“On behalf of all New Yorkers, I condemn the apparent terrorist attack in London today in the strongest possible terms,” Cuomo added.

The NYPD said it has been in contact with London law enforcement officials and has added officers, some heavily armed, and bomb-sniffing dogs to the city’s transit system.

Across the country, Los Angeles police said in a statement they had beefed up their presence on subway, commuter train and bus lines in response to the attack in London.

Amtrak, the country’s nationwide passenger rail carrier, said it was closely following the events in London but was not adding to the layers of security it already has in place.

“Robust security measures are in place at stations, on trains and along the tracks, and partnerships with federal agencies to gather intelligence information are underway,” Amtrak said in a statement.

(Reporting by Peter Szekely in New York and Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles; Editing by Dan Grebler and Jonathan Oatis)

(Reuters) – A lecturer at a New York City college of criminal justice who wrote on social media that he teaches “future dead cops” was placed on leave on Friday, the school’s president said, as the city’s mayor called the academic’s comment “vile.”

John Jay College of Criminal Justice adjunct professor Michael Isaacson has taught courses in economics and is a self-described member of the anti-fascist, or antifa, movement.

Many students at John Jay eventually join the New York Police Department.

On Friday, Pat Lynch the head of New York’s largest police union, the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, sent John Jay’s president a letter calling for Isaacson’s dismissal. Lynch highlighted an Aug. 23 tweet.

“Some of y’all might think it sucks being an anti-fascist teaching at John Jay College but I think it’s a privilege to teach future dead cops,” Isaacson wrote in the post on Twitter, according to a screen-grab from the union.

Lynch’s letter accused Isaacson of promoting violence against police.

The criticism of Isaacson’s social media post follows heightened scrutiny of law enforcement over officers’ use of force against minorities. The country has also seen a number of targeted killings of police officers, including the shooting death of five officers in Dallas last year.

John Jay College President Karol Mason said in a statement on Friday that John Jay faculty members had received death threats and that Isaacson was placed on administrative leave “out of concern for the safety” of students, faculty and staff. The college is reviewing the matter, Mason said.

“I am appalled that anyone associated with John Jay, with our proud history of supporting law enforcement authorities, would suggest that violence against police is ever acceptable,” Mason said.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio on Friday wrote on Twitter the city “won’t stand for the vile anti-police rhetoric of Michael Isaacson and neither should John Jay College.”

Isaacson appeared on Fox News on Thursday, where during an interview by host Tucker Carlson he defended the antifa movement.

Isaacson’s television appearance appears to have drawn increased attention to his Aug. 23 Twitter post.

Isaacson, in a statement on Friday, said he critiques “policing as an institution which operates at the behest of a state that increasingly represents the weapons and prison industry.”

“My biggest regret is putting my students and the John Jay faculty and staff at risk,” he said in a separate statement by email.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – An American citizen will go to trial in federal court in Brooklyn on Tuesday on charges that he supported al Qaeda and helped prepare a 2009 car bomb attack on a U.S. military base in Afghanistan.

Muhanad Mahmoud Al Farekh, 31, has pleaded not guilty to charges that include conspiring to murder Americans and use a weapon of mass destruction, and supporting a foreign terrorist organization. If convicted, he could face life in prison.

Jurors were scheduled to hear opening arguments in the case Tuesday morning. U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan is presiding over the trial, which is expected to last two weeks.

U.S. prosecutors in 2015 accused Al Farekh, who was born in Texas, of conspiring to support al Qaeda by traveling with two fellow students from the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada to Pakistan with the intention of fighting against American forces.

They also charged that Al Farekh helped prepare a vehicle-borne explosive device used in a Jan. 19, 2009 attack on a U.S. base in Afghanistan. The base was not identified.

Prosecutors have said an accomplice detonated one device, while Al Farekh’s fingerprints were found on packing tape for the second device, which another accomplice carried but failed to detonate.

One of the other university students Al Farekh traveled with in 2007, Ferid Imam, has also been indicted, though his whereabouts are unknown.

Prosecutors said Imam provided training at an al Qaeda camp in Pakistan in 2008 to three men later found guilty of plotting a bombing attack in the New York City subway system.

Authorities have said that before going to Pakistan, Farekh and Imam frequently watched videos promoting violent jihad, including online lectures by Anwar Al-Awlaki, the U.S.-born, Yemen-based militant preacher affiliated with al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula who was killed in a U.S. drone attack in 2011.

(Reuters) – A federal appeals court on Wednesday ruled that a New York Jewish congregation is the rightful owner of the nation’s oldest synagogue, in Rhode Island, along with a set of bells worth millions.

The decision by the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston marks the latest turn in a long-running legal battle that began when members of the Touro Synagogue in Newport tried to sell a set of ritual bells, called rimonim, worth some $7.4 million.

New York’s Congregation Shearith Israel attempted to block the deal, citing an 18th century agreement that named it a trustee.

A lower court last year placed ownership of the synagogue with the Rhode Island congregation that worships there, Newport’s Congregation Jeshuat Israel. The appeals court reversed that decision citing previous agreements.

“We hold that the only reasonable conclusions to be drawn from them are that CSI (Congregation Shearith Israel) owns both the rimonim and the real property,” the ruling said.

Louis Solomon, an attorney for Shearith Israel, said in a statement he was gratified by the ruling.

“We will continue in our historic role and look forward to putting this unfortunate litigation behind us,” he said.

Gary Naftalis, a lawyer for the Rhode Island congregation, said he was disappointed by the ruling and was exploring legal options.

The historic building was consecrated in 1763, when the town had one of the largest Jewish populations in the American colonies, including many who had fled the Spanish Inquisition. It was vacated in 1776 when most of the city’s Jewish population fled at the start of the Revolutionary War.

Members of the synagogue at that time shipped a pair of valuable silver bells used in rituals to the New York synagogue, and asked its leaders to act as trustees for the vacant temple. Worshippers returned by the 1870s and the New York group’s influence waned.

Shearith sued Newport’s Congregation Jeshuat Israel when it learned the Rhode Island group had reached a deal to sell the bells to Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. The Touro congregation had planned to use the funds to create a reserve to pay for maintenance of the building, after its finances were hard hit by the 2008 credit crisis.

The New York congregation also claimed ownership of the bells and charged that the Newport group was violating Jewish tradition by selling ritual objects.

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) – President Donald Trump will travel on Friday to a New York community shocked by a recent spate of graphic gang murders to highlight his efforts to stop illegal immigration and boost deportations.

Trump’s trip to Long Island gives the president an opportunity to showcase some progress on his agenda even as other legislative efforts flounder – and some respite from the chaos of a nasty power struggle among his senior staff that blew up on Thursday.

On Friday, Trump will highlight his administration’s push to deport members of the Mara Salvatrucha gang, better known as MS-13, the existence of which his White House blames on lax enforcement of illegal immigration from Central America.

“It’s going to be a very forceful message about just how menacing this threat is, and just how much pain is inflicted on American communities,” a senior administration official told reporters ahead of the trip.

Trump’s visit comes as his Attorney General Jeff Sessions traveled to El Salvador to highlight progress on the gang crack-down.

The gang took root in Los Angeles in the 1980s in neighborhoods populated with immigrants from El Salvador who had fled civil war. The Justice Department has said MS-13 now has more than 10,000 members across the United States.

On Long Island – not far from the New York City borough of Queens, where Trump grew up – MS-13 was behind the murders of two teenage girls in a suburban neighborhood last September, and four young men in a park in April.

There have been 17 murders on Long Island tied to the gang since January 2016, the Suffolk County Police Department has said.

Under Trump, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has targeted the gang, deporting more than 2,700 criminal gang members in fiscal 2017, up from 2,057 in the whole of the previous fiscal year, the White House has said.

“We are throwing MS-13 the hell out of here so fast,” Trump said earlier this week at a rally in Ohio.

Trump made concerns about illegal immigration a centerpiece of his campaign. One of his first actions in office was to scrap Obama-era guidelines that prioritized convicted criminals for deportations.

His administration is now taking a harder line on Central American youth who have crossed the border illegally without guardians – a group that law enforcement has said has been targeted for recruitment by MS-13.

Immigration agents plan to target teenagers who are suspected gang members, even if they are not charged with any crime, according to a memo seen by Reuters.

“We received complaints in recent weeks from terrified parents on Long Island that teens have already been detained on the thinnest of rationales, such as wearing a basketball jersey,” said Sebastian Krueger from the New York Civil Liberties Union.

There have been at least two lawsuits filed by people claiming they were mistakenly included in gang databases and then targeted for deportation, said Paromita Shah, from the National Immigration Project at the National Lawyers Guild.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – New York City commuters endured the start to a “summer of hell” on Monday, when track repairs at the nation’s busiest rail hub caused rerouted trains, packed platforms and lengthy delays for tourists, financiers and the working class in the U.S. business capital.

Thousands of riders were funneled into chaotic train depots, but the more apocalyptic warnings proved overstated as other commuters sailed into midtown Manhattan with relative ease, in part because of a substantial public awareness campaign.

State Governor Andrew Cuomo had predicted the partial shutdown at New York’s Pennsylvania Station would cause a “summer of hell” for the 600,000 who ride the train in and out of the station beneath Madison Square Garden.

The national passenger rail corporation Amtrak and regional commuter train operators New Jersey Transit Corp and the Long Island Rail Road all converge on Penn Station. All three canceled some services, rerouted others, and warned travelers to expect delays throughout the duration of the repairs, which began on Monday and are scheduled to be done Sept. 1.

“Welcome to hell,” read the front page of Monday’s New York Post.

The upgrades created disruptions which are expected to cost Manhattan employers about $14.5 million for each hour that commuters are delayed, according to an estimate by the Partnership for New York City.

Rerouted trains dumped masses of passengers at transfer stations such as Hoboken, New Jersey, as many sought alternate routes into the city, including buses, ferries and cars.

“Compared to Europe, I feel like we’re living in the Third World,” said Mark Van Wagner, an artist and art dealer who takes the Long Island Rail Road from Bellport, New York.

The commuter crunch highlights lagging investment in U.S. infrastructure, and especially in New York City, which is dependent on mass transit.

Getting into the city had already been problematic for those who live in the suburbs and in some cases made worse by service interruptions in the city’s creaky subway system.

Even so, Amtrak reported most of its trains ran on time or close to it, and travelers heeded the increased public service announcements and Amtrak representatives who were posted in Penn Station.

While congestion and delays were evident at some points, those on unaffected trains reported a relatively smooth ride.

“I didn’t feel any change. I’ve been using LIRR for the past 11 years and it’s been good,” said Tamer Seoud, chief financial officer for the non-profit Lutheran Social Services of New York.

NJ Transit workers use tape on placards as people arrive to the Hoboken Terminal in New Jersey, U.S., July 10, 2017. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz

At Hoboken station, transit workers bellowed instructions such as “tickets out!” and “this way to 39th street ferry!”

“The plans we put into effect seemed to be working,” New Jersey Transit spokesman Charles Ingoglia said. “And most importantly, our customers seemed to have done their homework and made their choices quickly this morning and got about their business.”

Social media users made a meme of the summer of hell, with J.H. Swanson (@jh_swanson) predicting it would be followed by the “autumn of purgatory.”

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A doctor who had lost his job at a New York City hospital opened fire with an assault rifle inside the building on Friday, killing another physician and wounding six other people before taking his own life in a burst of apparent workplace-related violence, officials said.

The gunman, wearing a white medical lab coat, stalked two floors of the Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center, in the New York borough of the Bronx, and tried to set himself on fire before police searching the building found him dead of a self-inflicted gunshot, Police Commissioner James O’Neill said.

One female physician was shot to death, and six other people were wounded, five seriously, including one who was shot in the leg, O’Neill said at a news conference.

Mayor Bill de Blasio characterized the shooting as an “isolated incident” that appeared to be “a workplace-related matter.” He said that it was “not an act of terrorism.”

“One doctor is dead, and there are several doctors who are fighting for their lives right now amongst those who are wounded,” de Blasio told reporters. “This is a horrific situation unfolding in the middle of a place that people associate with care and comfort.”

O’Neill said the gunman was armed with an assault rifle.

Neither the mayor nor police immediately identified the suspect or any of the victims. O’Neill said the gunman was a former employee of the 972-bed hospital.

Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, in an interview with WABC News, identified the gunman as Dr. Henry Bello and said he had been fired by the hospital. Other media reports said Bello was 45 years of age.

The New York Times and the New York Daily News reported, citing unnamed sources, that Bello had resigned from the hospital rather than face termination over accusations of sexual harassment.

NYPD officers work outside Bronx-Lebanon Hospital, after an incident in which a gunman fired shots inside the hospital in New York City, U.S. June 30, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

FROM NIGERIA TO CARIBBEAN MEDICAL SCHOOL

Bello had received a limited permit to practice as an international medical graduate in order to gain experience so he could be fully licensed, but that permit expired a year ago, the Times reported. It said he also had a pharmacy technician license from California. The Daily News said he had been a pharmacy tech at the hospital before he quit in 2015.

A native of Nigeria, Bello earned a medical degree from Ross University on the Caribbean island nation of Dominica and later worked briefly as a pharmacy technician for Metropolitan Hospital Center in Manhattan in 2012, according to David Wims, a lawyer who represented Bello in an unemployment insurance claim against that hospital.

In a telephone interview, Wims told Reuters Bello was injured on the job at Metropolitan a few months after being hired, then went on leave and never returned. In a decision upheld by the state’s appellate court division, Bello ultimately was denied unemployment benefits on grounds he quit without good cause.

Wims said he remembered Bello as “an even-keeled, respectful, humble person” and knew nothing of his history at the Bronx hospital.

Details about the shooting were still sketchy.

Authorities said the rampage unfolded shortly before 3 p.m. when the gunman went on a rampage on the 16th and 17th floors of the hospital. He and the slain physician both were found on the 17th floor, while the six other victims were found on the 16th floor, O’Neill said.

The incident sent waves of panic throughout the hospital, and police swarmed the building searching for the gunman.

“People were running. People were afraid,” said Jane Vachara, 50, a clerical associate on the ninth floor, who said she huddled with colleagues in a locker room for about an hour.

Adding to the pandemonium was the gunman’s attempt to set himself ablaze, which apparently triggered the hospital’s fire alarm system and halted elevator service, hampering efforts by first responders to reach victims and evacuate the building.

One ambulance worker, Robert Maldonado, told WCBS television that he and his partner had to carry a bleeding patient down nine flights of stairs to safety, applying pressure to the man’s wound on the way down.

Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center, located about one mile (1.6 km) north of Yankee Stadium, is the largest voluntary, non-profit health care system serving the South and Central Bronx, as well as one of the city’s biggest providers of outpatient services.

(Reuters) – New York’s attorney general is looking into a report that the Eric Trump Foundation funneled more than $1 million from charity golf tournaments into President Donald Trump’s business, a spokesman for the attorney general said on Friday.

Forbes magazine reported this week that the charity run by Eric Trump, the president’s second-oldest son, paid the Trump Organization to use its properties for charity events in recent years even though Eric Trump had told donors that the golf course and other assets were being used for free, so that just about all the money donated would help sick children.

Forbes reported that based on filings from the Eric Trump Foundation and other charities, more than $1.2 million “has no documented recipients past the Trump Organization.”

Eric Soufer, a spokesman for New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, said in an email that his office was looking into issues raised by the Forbes story.

Soufer did not immediately respond to a later request for details about the examination.

Trump, a New York real estate developer, said in December that he would dissolve the Donald J. Trump Foundation, but Schneiderman’s office has said it could not be wound down while the investigation was ongoing.

Forbes also reported that although donors to the Eric Trump Foundation were told all its money was going to help St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, fight pediatric cancer, more than $500,000 was re-donated to other charities.

Many of those charities “were connected to Trump family members or interests, including at least four groups that subsequently paid to hold golf tournaments at Trump courses,” Forbes said.

Amanda Miller, who works for the Trump Organization and who identified herself in an emailed response to a Reuters query as a “spokesperson for Eric Trump,” said the Eric Trump Foundation would cooperate fully with Schneiderman’s office.

Eric Trump is executive vice president of development and acquisition for the Trump Organization.

“During the past decade, the Eric Trump Foundation has raised over $16.3 million for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, including more than $3.6 million to St. Jude and other worthwhile causes just in 2016 alone,” Miller said in the email.

Eric Trump said in a tweet on Thursday that he had raised the money for St. Jude with an expense ratio of less than 12.3 percent. “Let’s not politicize pediatric cancer,” he said.

On his foundation’s website, Eric Trump said he had ceased direct fundraising efforts at the end of 2016 “in order to avoid the appearance or assertion of any impropriety and/or a conflict of interest.”

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